How does your product team usually work with your product marketing team with building the roadmap?

For each of our product missions with customer-facing initiatives, we have a dedicated PMM. The PMM works with the PM to capture the messaging and positioning of the product capability. They play a secondary role in our Alphas + Betas, hearing and collecting feedback from customers on how they value the product feature. PMM then is the primary lead when we get to GA + full market launches. Their focus is more on what we say to the market and in what channels and tend to operate more downstream f ...Read More

Product marketing is an essential partner for PMs throughout the product lifecycle. They can provide valuable insights on the customer and competitive landscape to help define roadmap and priorities. They can offer perspective on product messaging and positioning and identify what is or isn't working in the market. Working with Sales, Marketing, and leaders in the organization, product marketing can provide feedback on gaps in the product that are turning away prospects, identify unmet customer ...Read More

Our Product Marketing team is a key cross-functional partner and therefore provides us with suggestions, feedback, and market factors they are noticing through several channels. This is one of the ways in which our PMM team influences the roadmap. Additionally, our product marketing and product management teams work closely together to define key elements of the product strategy (key buyers, use cases, value proposition) as well as the go-to-market strategy and enablement activities. These pre & ...Read More

Wow, what a great question! I like to think that product marketing offers a different lens to the market landscape, competitive positioning, and product launches. As a result, I typically rely on four main activities:  1. Include product marketing in the annual product theme and road-mapping processes  2. Have a set sync with the product marketing to review shared performance indicators such as the top of funnel leads, website performance, and release post/notes engagement  3. Assign tasks and r ...Read More

Let's align on terminology first. https://medium.com/productfolio/release-plan-vs-launch-plan-774526d2817b The PMs lead on the Product Roadmap, but the PMMs lead on the GTM / Launch Plan. We package up our features that we want to launch into 3 -4 sizes (small , medium , large launch). Each launch classification will have it's playbook. The PMMs / PMs meet weekly to classify anything ongoing or new into these launch classifications. If necessary the relevant PM and PMM will align on the details ...Read More

I think it depends on what you mean by "building the roadmap." If you meant "how does product marketing help communicate the roadmap to sales and customers?" - this is a huge benefit to close partnership between product management and product marketing. Product marketing should be involved early and often in the launch of a new product or feature, specifically by learning the problem the roadmap item is intending to solve, understanding the market context and competitor alternatives to your prod ...Read More

I consider product marketing managers (PMM) part of the core partner group working with Product in roadmap creation (also including engineers, design, analytics, research, and other key functions based on the role). We aim to loop in product marketing as soon as roadmapping begins, and make sure they're aligned with product on objectives for the given quarter/half - this usually involves PMM sharing insights to help pressure-test the objectives, ensure we have a good understanding of customer se ...Read More

Product and product marketing work best as partners—not folks talking at one another through a wall. PMMs bring market context, buyer insight, and positioning expertise that help shape what you build and why it matters. Involving them early makes the roadmap stronger and easier to launch. Here’s how that partnership usually works: Co-create roadmap inputs: PMMs bring win/loss data, competitive intel, and market trends to help prioritize high-impact work. Validate demand & urgency: They help ...Read More

This depends on the type of product. Here are the examples of the scenarios - Customer facing product - PMM (Product Marketing Managers) is highly involved as soon there is clarity on the product requirements and discovery phase is mid way. They start drafting press releases and/or company wide or eTeam readouts/approval docs and start collecting feedback from the PMs Platform product/internal/technical - They are less involved depending on the downstream consumption of the technical product. If ...Read More

At Splunk, we’ve built a tightly executed roadmap update process where we spend about 2 weeks each quarter to refresh our roadmap so our customers, sales and GTM teams have the latest and greatest roadmap info. In that 2-week process, our product managers and product marketing folks actively collaborate on the roadmap updates. What does that collaboration look like? It’s product managers sharing the features and refining the messaging, customer outcomes and use cases with product marketing so we ...Read More

In a lot of organizations, PMM isn’t treated as a strategic partner. They end up as glorified order takers making slides and packaging launches. That’s a mistake. If that’s the extent of their impact, the function was set up wrong. I’m a big believer in involving PMM early, not just at launch. When we’re thinking about the roadmap, I like to ask: what will the launch actually look like? What’s the press release? What’s the demo? What story are we telling? PMM is a great partner in shaping that, ...Read More

I've worked with marketers who are great at understanding customer and business opportunities. I regularly work with these teams in combination with data science and user research teams to form an "understand roadmap" to answer the open questions that would most help our product progress (about our market, our users, our competition, our brand). At times I've also asked these marketing partners play leadership roles in team roadmap planning and they've done a great job. Other marketers are great ...Read More

At Carta, our product teams collaborate closely with product marketing when building the roadmap to offer context into upcoming features and product enhancements. Product marketing leverages this information to develop compelling messaging, positioning, and go-to-market strategies aligned with the product roadmap. Once we get close to an upcoming release, we usually work together more often to shape the value proposition and share it with customers and prospects via webinars, blogs, and updates ...Read More

While the product team ultimately owns the roadmap and is responsible for setting the vision and strategy, the marketing team understands the buyer personas and is responsible for messaging and launch. The marketing team has unique insights into customer and market needs. The two functions must collaborate to build a roadmap that addresses market needs and sets the business for success. The key aspects of successful collaboration in building a compelling roadmap are establishing clear goals, own ...Read More